The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind

Book Description

Our minds are working all the time, but we rarely stop to think about how they work. The human mind has many different ways to think, says Marvin Minsky, the leading figure in artificial intelligence and computer science. We use these different ways of thinking in different circumstances, and some of them we don't even associate with thinking. For example, emotions, intuitions, and feelings are just other forms of thinking, according to Minsky. In his groundbreaking new work, The Emotion Machine, Minsky shows why we should expand our ideas about thinking and how thinking itself might change in the future.

The Emotion Machine explains how our minds work, how they progress from simple kinds of thought to more complex forms that enable us to reflect on ourselves -- what most people refer to as consciousness, or self-awareness. Unlike other broad theories of the mind, this book proceeds in a step-by-step fashion that draws on detailed and specific examples. It shows that thinking -- even higher-level thinking -- can be broken down into a series of specific actions. From emotional states to goals and attachments and on to consciousness and awareness of self, we can understand the process of thinking in all its intricacy. And once we understand thinking, we can build machines -- artificial intelligences -- that can assist with our thinking, machines that can follow the same thinking patterns that we follow and that can think as we do. These humanlike thinking machines would also be emotion machines -- just as we are.

This is a brilliant book that challenges many ideas about thinking and the mind. It is as insightful and provocative as it is original, the fruit of a lifetime spent thinking about thinking.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent book on thinking machines - but misleading title.......2007-06-10

I agree with the reviewer who noted how odd it was that a book titled "The Emotion Machine" does not discuss Joseph LeDoux, even if only to refute him. But I think that the problem is with the title, not the book. I found many of Minsky's insights very helpful - it is a very good book about how machines think. And if you are not a dualist, then those insights apply to people too. The book is very well organized and clearly written, and helps you think about thinking. I especially enjoyed his discussion of qualia (although he does not use the term), and why he thinks it is not quite the problem that so many philosophers want to make it.

Minsky's main take on emotions is that emotional states are not fundamentally different from other types of thinking, and that the entire dicotomy of rationality v. emotion is misleading. He prefers to view them all as different ways of thinking - of utilizing various mental resources at one's disposal, some conscious and some not. He organizes his discussion of difficult material very well, but I wish there was more grounding in the underlying neural anatomy of human emotion.

The common, but wrong approach........2007-05-25

What is so special about emotions?
Emotions is just one kind of bechavior, among many, demonstrated by reasonable systems. It is didn't matter what kind of system it is.
Machine and human, and bacteria, or dog, all reasonable systems are subjective simply because they are isolated from direct interactions with environment and capable to demonstrate the emotional behavior.
Contrary to common opinion all live creature, not human only, are emotional.
Best regards Michael Zeldich

AI: About Intuition.......2007-04-24

My brother is a computer programmer with a computer game company and he discovered something fascinating while trying to create a simulation for the movement of a crowd.

By inputing three variables: 1) be like a common member of the group but 2) stay a certain discrete distance from your neighbor while 3) moving away when everyone gets too close, he captured the seemingly naturalist choatic looking behavior of a crowd.

The point here is that the operation of a simple set of rules can create the appearance of the phenomenon of seemingly complicated and choatic behavior.

And I don't think the point is mistaken here where Minsky and his likes consider the delicate calculus of human behavior.

While his book ends by discussing the subject of self, perhaps self is perhaps the starting point for all proper discussions of consciousness and identity. This is because -- like all animate behavior -- the existence of self is uniquely keyed to the fact of animate autonomy.

In other words, the greatest of behvaioral conundrums is perhaps the simplest. In order to to decided what to eat, do or where to go, self provides that unique user perspective to allow the necessary illumination of what inbuilt needs remain unmet and which are in the most immediate need of meeting.

An effective engineer, Mother Nature has put into excellent service the process of emotion which allows the quick, effecient recording of the relevant information.

In his classic work The Astonishing Hypothesis, Francis Crick said that self was nothing more than the current state of our neurons and ganglia. Richard Dawkins has repeatedly shown that those neurons and ganglia recieve their current structure through the explanable process of natural selection. And Minsky has done well to show that as a result of that process our brains our like programs that have been worked over many times creating occassional inconsistencies.

Indeed it is perhaps these inconsistencies themselves that lay at the very heart of intuition.

Frustrating and disappointing.......2007-04-21

I recall appreciating The Society of Mind. But in this new book, his best answer to the Mystery of Experience is, "experiencing something like a color seems simple but is actually complicated". His main answer to the mega-Mystery of the Experience of Self-Awareness is, "consciousness is a suitcase term that we use to refer to many different things". It is almost like he is pretending to not experience these mysteries himself, so that he does not have to seriously engage the question of how/why our brain/minds do these things, and under what conditions other machines might. So frustrating that it makes the book hard to read -- it might have been better to skip over these matters more, if he can't deal with them more usefully.

thinking : critic - selector model.......2007-04-01

1. We don't recognize a problem as hard until we've spent some time on it without making any significant progress. For if you can diagnose the particular type of problem you face, then you can use that knowledge to switch to a more appropriate way to think.
2. Critic-selector model of thinking: Each critic object can recognize a certain species of problem type. When a critic sees enough evidence, the critic will activate a "selector", which tries to start up a set of resources that it has learned is likely too act as a way to think that may help in this situation.
3. If a problem seems familiar, use reasoning by analogy. If it seems unfamiliar, change the way you're describing it. If it seems too difficult, divide it into several parts. If it still seems difficult, replace it by a simpler problem. If none of these work, ask someone for help.
4. If too many critics are aroused, then describe the problem in more detail. If too few critics are aroused, then make the description more abstract. If important resources conflict then you should try to discover a cause. If there has been a series of failures, then switch to a different set of critics.
5. Emotional reactions: cautious vs. reckless, unfriendly vs. amicable, visionary vs. practical, inattentive vs. vigilant, reclusive vs. sociable, and courageous vs. cowardly; each such emotional way to think can lead to different ways to deal with things-either by making you see things from new points of view or by increasing your courage or doggedness. If too many critics are active then your emotions would keep changing too quickly. And if those critics stopped working at all, then you'd get stuck in just one of states.
6. The best way to solve a problem is to already know a way to solve it. Searching extensively. When one has no better alternative, one could try to search through all possible chains of actions. But that method is not often practical because such searches grow exponentially.
7. Reasoning by analogy: when a problem reminds you of one that you solved in the past, you may be able to adapt that case to the present case situation.
8. Divide and conquer: if you can't solve a problem all at once, then break it down into smaller parts.
9. Reformulation: find a different representation that highlights more relevant information. Understand in a different way.
10. Planning: consider the set of subgoals and examine how they affect each other.
11. Techniques for problem solving: simplifying, elevating, and changing the subject.
12. More reflective ways to think: wishful thinking, self-reflection, impersonation.
13. Other modes of thinking: 1) logical contradiction: try to prove that your problem cannot be solved, and then look for a flaw in that argument. 2) Logical reasoning. We often try to make chains of deduction. 3) External representation. Drawing suitable diagrams 4) Imagination. What would happen if by simulating possible actions inside the mental models that one has built.
14. Creating higher level selectors and critics help to reduce the sizes of the searches we make.
15. Modes of thought: preparation, incubation, revelation, and evaluation.
16. Creative ideas must be combined with the knowledge and skills already possess-so it must not be too different from ideas with which we're already familiar.
17. If too may critics are active then you notice flaws to correct and spend much time repairing them and never get at the important things and people perceive us as depressed. If too many critics are turned off then you ignore alarms and concerns that would help you concentrate allowing errors and flaws. The fewer the critics active, then the fewer goals pursued, making one intellectually dull.

Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film As An Emotion Machine (Les's Communication Series)

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Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film As An Emotion Machine (Les's Communication Series)
Ed S. Tan
Manufacturer: Lawrence Erlbaum
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ASIN: 0805814094

Machine Consciousness (Journal of Consciousness Studies,)

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Machine Consciousness (Journal of Consciousness Studies,)

Manufacturer: Imprint Academic
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ASIN: 090784524X

Book Description

Can a machine really have feelings? Well, even a humble thermostat knows when it gets too hot -- and can do something about it. But can a machine think? Does it have a personality? How would you know? In this collection of essays we hear from an international array of computer and brain scientists who are actively working from both the machine and human ends of things to bridge the gap between the mind and the machine.

The Body Book: A Fantastic Voyage to the World Within (Emotionally, Physiologically and Neurologically)

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The Body Book: A Fantastic Voyage to the World Within (Emotionally, Physiologically and Neurologically)
David Bodanis
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Compay
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ASIN: B000OMRHAA

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The Body Book is a dazzling adventure to the inner cosmos of your body. A lucid narrative combined with brilliant and unusual photographs explore the most intricate details of just what happens to you emotionally, physiologically, and neurologically in the course of your everyday life. Understand and visualize how you can experience fear and anger, desire and sex, conception and pregnancy, pain and sickness, heat and cold, relaxation and sleep. The Body Book celebrates the conplexity and beauty of your inner landscape. Over 140 unique color and black and white photographs are included.

Computer Vision in Human-Computer Interaction (Lecture Notes Series)

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Computer Vision in Human-Computer Interaction (Lecture Notes Series)
N. Sebe
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ASIN: 3540220127

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI 2004, held at ECCV 2004 in Prague, Czech Republic in May 2004.

The 19 revised full papers presented together with an introductory overview and an invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 45 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on human-robot interaction, gesture recognition and body tracking, systems, and face and head.

Ernest Lee and the Emotion Commotion Pollution Machine

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Ernest Lee and the Emotion Commotion Pollution Machine
Alan Warble
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Ghost in the Machine (The Danube Edition )

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Stick to It - Great Read
Pride covetousness lust anger gluttony envy & selfishness?
Not true to his own theories
A mind working overtime
The Evil that Men do

Ghost in the Machine (The Danube Edition )
Arthur Koestler
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Customer Reviews:

Stick to It - Great Read.......2005-09-09

There is no doubt that Mr. Koestler explains his thoughts in immense detail and labor... This will affect you in a couple of possible ways:
- You'll love following the train of thought and appreciate even the train wrecks; or
- You'll start drifting off into visions of dancing monkeys and magical fireworks...

In all seriousness Mr. Koestler explains the reasoning and imagination behind all of his assertions and assumptions with exacting detail...

His theory is excellent and combines some mainstream stuff (from his time and relevant now) with some of the fringe ideas of various fields. The whole package is woven together with expert touch and Mr. Koestler has a rare gift of explaining things not in an "idiot-proof" fashion but down-to-earth enough to let you think about it.

The basic premise is the exploration of mankind's "darker" side -mentally speaking. The pathological human mind that 'builds splendid cathedrals and decorates them with gargoyles'; Mr. Koestler explains them as "two sides of the same medal coined in the evolutionary mint" - and indeed he makes that case with astounding persuasiveness... His concepts sound extremely plausible and seem to be well-founded on facts and ideas alike...

Stick to the heavier or rambling parts as he ties them into the overall idea eventually! You will walk away from this book having learned something...

Pride covetousness lust anger gluttony envy & selfishness?.......2004-02-25

ýA man coins not a new word without some peril; for if it happens to be received, the praise is but moderate; if refused, the scorn is assured.ý

So wrote Ben Jonson, and so quoted Arthur Koestler on page 48 of his The Ghost in the Machine (1967). Koestler inserted the quotation to express the uneasiness he felt at suggesting a neologism. The very useful word he coinedýýholonýýseems to have gone tragically underappreciated, while Koestler has, I suspect, not received much in the way of scorn for his impudence (at least in this respect). Jonson was wrong. A man coins not a new word without some peril, itýs true. But the nature of the peril is this: if it happens to be received, the praise is but moderate; if refused, the coiner gets not even scorn.

What is a holon? Coined from the Greek holos (whole) and the diminutive suffix -on (after the pattern of proton, electron, etc.), the term holon ýmay be applied to any stable biological or social sub-whole which displays rule-governed behavior.ý Koestler writes:

Parts and wholes in an absolute sense do not exist in the domain of life.... The organism is to be regarded as a multi-leveled hierarchy of semi-autonomous sub-wholes, branching into sub-wholes of a lower order, and so on. Sub-wholes on any level of the hierarchy are referred to as holons. Biological holons are self-regulating open systems which display both the autonomous properties of wholes and the dependent properties of parts. This dichotomy is present on every level of every type of hierarchic organization, and is referred to as the Janus Effect.... The concept of holon is intended to reconcile the atomistic and holistic approaches. (Appendix I.1; scrambled somewhat for conciseness.)

The first third of Koestlerýs book, the section titled ýOrder,ý is dedicated to the concept of the holon, and his introduction to open hierarchic system theory. The versatility and universality of the holon concept should have guaranteed its entry into the language. Its prevalence in all ordered, i.e. hierarchic, systems, and particularly biological organisms, Koestler illustrates through the parable of the two watchmakers, Mekhos and Bios. Their watches are of equal quality and of equal complexity (a thousand pieces each) but their methods of production differ. Bios builds durable sub-units of ten pieces each, ten of which can be joined together to create a secure sub-assembly of one-hundred piecesýand ten sub-assemblies, of course, make one complete watch. Mekhos, on the other hand, adds one piece at a time, seriatim; as such, any interruption requires him to start afresh. Biosýs method is clearly superior not just because an interruption will only set him back, at most, nine steps (versus Mekhosýs possible 999), but because Biosýs watches will tend to be much sturdier than Mekhosýs. ýIt is easy to show mathematically that if a watch consists of a thousand bits, and if some disturbance occurs at an average of once in every hundred assembling operationsýthen Mekhos will take four thousand times longer to assemble a watch than Bios. Instead of a single day, it will take him eleven years.ý Consequently, Biosýs business thrives, while Mekhos barely manages to scrape by.

Biological systems (Bios), in other words, are not just vortices of chance patterns constrained by deterministic mechanical laws (Mekhos); they are hierarchic systems made up of Janus-faced, quasi-independent holons. In ýBecoming,ý the second part of the book, Koestler discusses evolution in holarchic terms, citing organelles (e.g. mitochondria) and homologous organs (e.g. the human arm and the birdýs wing) as examples of evolutionary holonsýsub-units which appear, with striking similarity, across countless discrete species. Just as nearly every company has an IT department, every cell has chemical power plants which extract energy from food. And just as automobile designers do not overhaul but rather perform variations on basic components such as the engine, chassis, or suspension system, evolution progresses by making small changes to existing tried and true mechanismsýthe arm of the human, the wing of the bird, the leg of the dog, and the flipper of the seal, however different in appearance or function, are all made of bones, muscles, and blood vessels.

This tendency to recycle old parts has its risks as well as its obvious benefits, however. The legacy systems donýt always interact smoothly with the enhancements. This is essentially the thesis of the third part of the book, ýDisorderý: that it is not unreasonable to assume that, considering the ýexplosive rate of the brainýs development, which so widely overshot its mark, something may have gone wrong ... More precisely, that the lines of communication between the very old and the brand-new structures were not developed sufficiently to guarantee their harmonious interplay, the hierarchic co-ordination of instinct and intelligence.ý

In short, Koestler blames the dominance of instinct over intellectýthe latterýs subservience to the former as physiologically manifest in the neocortexýs subjection to the brainýs more reptilian limbic systemsýfor not only humanityýs spectacular social and moral cataclysms, but the halting, erratic progress of science as well. The ýpassionate neighing of affect-based beliefsý prevent us from listening to the voice of reason. This is why all moral exhortation, all efforts of persuasion by reasoned argument, are doomed to failure; they

rely on the implicit assumption that homo sapiens, though occasionally blinded by emotion, is a basically rational animal, aware of the motives of his own actions and beliefsýan assumption which is untenable in the light of both historical and neurological evidence. All such appeals fall on barren ground; they could take root only if the ground were prepared by a spontaneous change in human mentality all over the worldýthe equivalent of a major biological mutation.

The solution to our predicament is sketched out and advocated by Koestler in the final few pages of The Ghost in the Machine; it is, to put it succinctly, a pharmacological one. Readers will bristle at the contentious, and some might say contemptible, declaration that mankindýs only hope for long-term survival is through medication, but to me the answer seems logical enough. If we agree that something has gone awry in our phylogenetic development, and it seems an anodyne enough hypothesis, then nothing short of ýtampering with human natureý can rectify the pathology of our species, which has been so garishly demonstrated in holocaust after holocaust. And as Koestler is himself quick to point out, we tamper with our nature every day, and have done so ýever since the first hunter wrapped his shivering frame into the hide of a dead animal.ý It could be argued that part of our problem has been tampering: Pasteur et al. tampered on a microscopic level, and with colossal repercussions. No one would seriously propose a voluntary abjuration of antibiotics, however, in order to cull the herd a bit. We can only move forward.

Letýs be explicit: we are considering an overpopulated, irrational, imbalanced species equipped with the ability to manufacture weapons of genosuicidal magnitudeýan ability which will not evaporate:

As the devices of atomic and biological warfare become more potent and simpler to produce, their spreading to young and immature, as well as old and over-ripe, nations is inevitable. An invention, once made, cannot be dis-invented; the bomb has come to stay. Mankind has to live with it forever: not merely through the next crisis and the next one, but forever; not through the next twenty or two hundred or two thousand years, but forever. It has become part of the human condition.

ýThe Promethean myth,ý Koestler goes on, ýhas acquired an ugly twist: the giant reaching out to steal the lightning from the gods is insane.ý With this in mind, the advent of a suggestibility-curbing pillýýan artificially simulated, adaptive mutation to bridge the rift between the phylogenetically old and new brain, between instinct and intellect, emotion and reason,ý to ýcounteract misplaced devotion and that militant enthusiasm, both murderous and suicidal, which we see reflected in the pages of the daily newspaperýýseems relatively benign. We cannot ask people to be more rational, more thoughtful, less susceptible to blind passion, bigotry, murderous devotion.

I sympathize with Koestlerýs proposal, but I am pessimistic as to its practicality. And I think he might have overlooked the possibility that suggestibility and subservience to the affect-based beliefs might be the very epoxies holding society togetherýfor better or for worse.

Consider Heinrich Eichmann who, as Koestler observes, ýwas not a monster or a sadist, but a conscientious bureaucrat, who considered it his duty to carry out his orders and believed in obedience as the supreme virtue; far from being a sadist, he felt physically sick on the only occasion when he watched the Zircon gas at work.ý He was, in other words, the perfect cog, a smoothly functioning holon in something larger than himself. He was a good citizen in a bad society. Where exactly does his sin lie? Where his pathology?

ýWar is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars; and loyalty is a noble thing.ý And Solzhenitsyn wrote:

Ideologyýthat is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and othersý eyes, so that he wonýt hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.... Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions?

Perhaps hereýs a way of daring to insist that evildoers do not exist: by declaring, instead, that only bureaucrats exist. We could move up the hierarchy and blame everything on its head (Hitler in this case) but frequently the hierarchy has no headýperhaps there is only an amorphous board of directors; perhaps the hierarchy is open-endedýand of course no hierarchy operates in a vacuum, and no hierarchy can function without its sub-holons.

Eichmann, we feel compelled to say, was as culpable as anyoneýi.e., fully, or not at all. In him, perhaps, we are given a glimpse of the true nature of contemporary ýevilý: conscientious bureaucracy; obedience as the supreme virtue. The integrative tendency, the desire to transcend the self, the desire to belong, to fit in, to function as a part of some larger organization, to serve something larger than the petty egoýthis is what stymies intellectual progress and permits wars and pogroms. Death camps cannot be implemented without a stable hierarchic society to carry out the plan; humans cannot exterminate one another on such a cosmic scale without first getting along.

ýThe self-assertive behaviour of the group is based on the self-transcending behaviour of its members, which often entails sacrifice of personal interests and even of life in the interest of the group. To put it simply: the egotism of the group feeds on the altruism of its members.ý This is the most important revelation in Koestlerýs book: that the virtuous, self-denying, self-transcending, integrative urges are far more dangerous than the self-assertive ones.

And this urge to integrate, to belong, to blindly submit to the rules of the social holon you belong to, is the warp and the woof of the fabric of society. It may well be instinctualýit may well be written in our genesýbecause it is implicit, inescapable, a necessity in any hierarchic system. The human individual is truly Janus-faced because his or her self-assertive and integrative inclinations are at odds, true, but also mutually dependent. To do whatýs best for your group is in fact whatýs best for you; self-surrender is self-preservation. If the body dies, so do all of its cells.

What would we have had Eichmann do? We fancy that we can imagine a scenario in which his refusal to administrate the death camps (a pang of conscience prompted, in our thought experiment, by Koestlerýs Pill, perhaps) might have made some difference. ýHe could have conscientiously objected,ý we say from the smug safety of our armchair. And then what? He probably would have been exterminated, and someone with less compunctions, someone with a stronger desire to fit in, put in his place.

Hegel has said that ýWhat experience and history teach us is thisýthat people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.ý If this is true, it is probably unnecessary to pose this question: Have any of us learned anything from, for example, the Holocaust? How would we, as people or governments, prevent a repeat? We glibly take it for granted that nothing so horrific, and in so recent memory, can have failed to make us a little more jaded, a little less naïve, a little less susceptible to mass hysteria or national insanityýand we leave it at that. Hereýs all weýve really learned: Nazisýbad. Hitlerýreal bad. Case closed. But of course the next Nazis will not call themselves Nazis; the next Hitler wonýt have the mustache.

What we should have learned, perhaps, is that our suggestibility needs to be curbed; that each of us has an obligation to be extremely careful about which holons we allow ourselves to be subsumed by; that our integrative tendencies need to be reined and restrained. Before we resort to pharmacology, we should presumably attempt education. So maybe we should be indoctrinating our children with the belief that blindly accepting indoctrination can be disastrous. ýOh. You see the problem.

Koestlerýs Pill, or any equivalent thereof, might well dissolve society. If we were properly critical, properly rational, all the time, if we took nothing on faith, we would never learn. The paradox is that the march of science is founded on credulity. Specialization, which has become more or less prerequisite to progress in any field, is a hierarchic branching out and narrowing down of knowledge. If every generation of physicists had to rediscover the electron, no one would have ever got to the quark; if I paused to evaluate, to impugn, to prove every one of the ýstatements of factý Iýve received from parents and professors, television and textbooks, over the course of my lifetime I would probably never have graduated from high school. In fact I am critical of very little. How could I afford to be? We stand like Newton on the shoulders of giants but only because we trust the giants enough to get up on their shouldersýwhen of course they could dash us to the earth if they so desired. Jacob Empson has written (in Sleep and Dreaming):

Rather than modern Western beliefs being less mystic than those in antiquity, or in underdeveloped communities, they seem equally if not more so than some. It could be argued that the very incomprehensibility of the modern world has made us even more credulous. Many of the quite commonplace products of modern technology might as well be magic, for all that any normal person could be expected to understand how they work.

The human race is an unfathomably complex network of overlapping open-ended hierarchies; it is a juggernaut trundling forth, with no one at the helm.

And so too is each one of us. How can it be otherwise?

This is one of the best books I've read in a while. Koestler's erudition, humanity, and prose are nonpareil. Read it and make up your own mind -- it's your moral imperative.

Not true to his own theories.......2003-07-26

This book is one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in a long time. Koestler presents a fascinating theory that we are a flawed species and then -- out of thin air -- produces the "better living through chemistry" cure (we all need to be medicated because our reptilian brains are ill at ease with our advanced mammalian brains). However, earlier in a coherent part of the book, he presents a theory that genetic failures and designs which have become over-specialized (like his example of the marsupial) eventually are resolved by paedomorphosis (a kind of "backtracking" in which evolution goes back a level and tries another branch to a better solution - rather like the depth-first search) and "self-repair". Thus the true solution to man's problems, in Koestler's own framework (had he not just tossed off the chapter he did), would have to have been human genetic re-engineering, not pharmacology. But what a ride this book is!

A mind working overtime.......2002-04-15

What an enigma Arthur Koestler was! His books range from Zionism to telepathic powers, as well as novels about the Stalinist trials. The Ghost in the machine was my introduction to his writings and it is an astonishing approach to evolution -explained simply leading to frightening and telling conclusions about man and his capacity for war. It is the work of a mind that cannot keep still and keep taking one step further on. Read it and I hope that it opens this exciting and daunting author to you as well. I was never the same after reading it and it has coloured all my thinking ever since. Read it and understand the Taliban, World War One and the Ku Klux Klan. It is nothing less than an evolutionary argument for our collective insanity.

The Evil that Men do.......2001-02-10

When I first read this book I was stunned... and as one of the other reviewers said, baffled by why he produced that ending! (it's the ending which has "taken" one star off my rating). Always the polymath, Koestler starts by covering psychology, including Skinner's experiments with rats and subsequent theories on human nature which he pulls apart thoroughly. Koestler then comes out with the unfashionable theory that the human brain may have evolutionary flaws in it, since it was merely built on the older more primitive brains of its ancestors and the new and old parts do not always communicate well with one another. Partially because of this we have a lot of the problems of human life such as the urge to self-destruction and violence, which emanate from the older parts of the brain. He ties this in with history and if I remember, results of some shocking experiments. It has lost some of its immediacy since the end of the Cold War (nuclear bombs are still with us more than ever in Israel, Pakistan, India, China etc).

While I have simplified some of the book's ideas above, it is not always light reading, but it can be read by a layman. I think some of the subjects Koestler tackles are taboo (such as the idea humans overall are instrinsically "evil") rather than innately good, and he dismisses wishful thinking. Some people do take issue with his ideas... unfortunately some of the attacks are ad hominem... but where they aren't I suggest you examine very carefully both sides of the story. The message in this book is still pertinent enough, even if the proposed solution isn't.

Book Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the First International Workshop on Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction, MLMI 2004, held in Martigny, Switzerland in June 2004.

The 30 revised full papers presented were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and revision. The papers are organized in topical sections on HCI and applications, structuring and interaction, multimodal processing, speech processing, dialogue management, and vision and emotion.

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